EDITORIAL
CORRESPONDENCE Taxing Taxes Gstaad, Switzerland To the Editors: Your editorial on the trickle-down of tax reduction [Jan. 7] is the best I've read for a year--although some bias could be...
...Printed Im tie USA and pub/isbed hi-weekly by Commonweal Publlsileg Co., 232 Mad/sea Ave., New Fork, N.r...
...evangelize through theater and the arts...
...And another: "Perhaps my ideas would change again if there was someone I could talk to, in depth, rather than in passing...
...follow up with another survey that probes more deeply into the nuances of belief in various doctrines...
...149 VERSE: St...
...Maybe they know the usual sermons on pornography, abortion, money and domestic virtues are terrible...
...4 March 1977:132...
...JOHN KENNETH GALBKAITH A f f a i r s o f S t a t e Highland Creek, Canada To the Editors: Re Frank Getlein's "Could Conservatives Conserve...
...Lois Spear, Michael Zeik: 153 JAMBS O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Manag/ng Ed/tor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Asseclete Editor ANNE M. KOEERTSON, Edltor/al Asslstaof COLIN L, WESYERBECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FJdHDIIL...
...And New York's East Side, an old, very mixed and fairly affluent neighborhood known as Yorkville, may not be typical New York...
...Rev...
...The reverse would seem a more reasonable reading of the data...
...How many priests would attend mass every Sunday in parish churches if they weren't saying the masses themselves...
...Poetry FRANK GETL/IN:~ Was/dngton BRIAN WICKER...
...Much the same would appear to be true with respect to fear of an intrusive central govt...
...Of the 70 who received the questionnaire, only 39 took the trouble to fill it out...
...17]: Fear of a standing army was at least at one time part of the tradition of the English-speaking peoples...
...Great Er/taln &LAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTEMAAR: Rome JOHN r Dublle EDWARD S. SKILl.IN: Pnb//sler JOHN ERUEAKBR: Adverflsleg Mano~r Sta~- UHDA F. KAYL/E, PAMELA J. IqTZGERALD, HARRiomwo |ALSKY COMMONWEAL A review of Public Affairs, Litoratore and tie Arts...
...Only 52 percent of the churchgoers considered premarital ~ex wrong, while 63 percent judged abortion always immoral...
...Some suggestions from us: priests and religious leave the rectories and live and worship in apartments...
...To the Editors: The emptiness and insanity of John Connally of Texas to suggest that televising executions is a deterrent to crime, was humorously brought to my attention by Frank Getlein's Washington Report entitled "Speculative Spectaculars" [7 Jan.] (Continued on page 159) NEWS & VIEWS: 130 CORRESPONDENCE: 131 EDITORIAL: ! 31 AkPPOINTItlENTS CALENDAR: Frank Getlein 133 PLANING AND EBUCAL~iON: Brian Wicker 134 A MATTEB PllEOBDAINigD: Peter Steinlels 13G TIlE VATICAN'S OSTPOLITIK: Tom Heneghan 137 CBIUSTIAN-MABXIST Bl~l[]E IN .A3tlERICA: Leonard Swidler 138 AMERICA'S OSTPOLITIK: R. Heal Tannahill 1 4 ~t PRESS: W|~s, L o s e r s , I~hrecm~ra: Thomas Powers 147 TEE SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Dec...
...But a sociological study just published by the Archdiocese of New York Office of Pastoral Research on the religious attitudes and practices of Yorkville's Catholic and ex-Catholic population both answers and raises some questions that have implications for the whole American church...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE YORKVILLE REPORT New York may not be America...
...Most priests I know would rather not get into any deep discussion about Faith...
...What is not clear is to what extent if any this fear was a distinguishing feature of this tradition's conservative aspect...
...publish a sophisticated community newspaper that deals with religious issues...
...The study demonstrated that although the great majority of the laity are disaffected, many still long for what religious conviction offers...
...Long known as the city's principal in-town concentration of the rich, as well as the home of the German, Czech, and Hungarian middle-class, the upper East Side, from 59th to 96th Streets, has rapidly become the place which, as one historian wrote, ambitious college graduates, first moving to New York, use as "their habitat and mating ground before moving to childrenoriented suburbs...
...Those who did respond took a fairly consistent orthodox position on most dogmatie and moral questions...
...I, 1924, to date ava//ab/e tireegl University Mtcr~Elms...
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...Most sensible members of this tradition would I think always have granted the state the right to be curious about the affairs of potential troublemakers even before they had any chance to make trouble and recognize that there would seem to be no alternative r allowing the state wide discretion in deciding whom to be curious about...
...Ruth T. Doyle, authors of the study, "Catholic Life in Yorkville," have concluded that a high percentage of the area's residents have fallen away from the Church in rapidly increasing numbers not so much because of disappointment with the Church's moral teaching, such as Humanae Vitae, or the changes in Catholic life and ritual brought on by Vatican II, but because of a much deeper and ultimately more disturbing phenomenon: loss of belief in the mysteries of the faith...
...The office mailed forms to 2,222 names drawn from a telephone directory and distributed 1,260 through the parishes (plus all the area priests) to gather 266 usable responses for the basis of the study...
...Philip J. Murnion and Mrs...
...It is a bit much to argue that the Republican party destroyed Teddy Roosevelt...
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...300 N. Zeeb Read, Ane Arbor, M/r t...
...Nor would I live it any differently if I felt differently about these beliefs...
...As one disaffected subject replied on the questionnaire: "The fact of God's existence, and whether Christ is God's son, is really not relevant to my daily life, and how I live it...
...One respondent wrote: "I wish I believed in God, because I think that throughout the centuries .the people with the more profound sense of reality believed in him...
...Perhaps these figures represent the more conscientious priests reacting against the ineffectualness of their priest-colleagues...
...4|1045, National Serials D~kr ~gus No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
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...remove poor preachers from the pulpits...
...10016...
...My thanks as well as my congratulations...
...They longed for what religious sociologist Peter Berger calls a "plausibility system," a system of thought and action that p~rovides meaning, purpose and a set of relationships to life...
...Cepyr/g/~ C 1977 Cemmeaweof Pablisileg Co., lee..--US and Canada: S!7 a year...
...62 percent (contrasted to 51 percent of the laity) experienced a lack of leadership on faith and belief...
...Ellen Murphy 135 JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY: BELATED mERO: Philip Scharper 150 CRITICS' SELECTIONS FOIl RELIGIOUS BOOK WEEK: Michael J, Bandler, Francine Cardman, George G. Higgins, Ralph Mclnerny, Martin E. Marry...
...First some background on YorkviUe and the origins of the study...
...Clearly, the Church must find radically new ways of ministering to this bright young crowd who shuttle between their ad agency offices and the 35th floor of their apartment buildings, with refueling stops at P. J. Clarke's Saloon...
...Commonweal /s Indexed in Reader's Guide to Periedkaf IJtoratore, Catholic Per/ad/cof Index, and Book Review Digest...
...Only a few more of the disaffected believed in Jesus as the divine son of God, the resurrection of Jesus or the sacraments as occasions for union with God...
...But the importance of the survey to the religious future of the area was dear...
...Maybe they have stood in the back of the church during Sunday mass and seen one another bore the dwindling congregations by their mechanical gestures, lack of attention to the meaning of the ritual, with a dragged-out, bloodless liturgical routine...
...But, expressing their feelings on the community life of the Church, they were in some instances even more critical than the laity: 62 percent of the priests found parish liturgies uninspiring...
...Meanwhile, there was a great deal of confusion on just what the Church actually does teach on basic questions...
...True, all kinds of papers come across a busy priest's desk...
...There are many reasons for the loss of faith...
...72 percent said there was a lack of parish community and 51 percent (vs...
...I suspect in practice it depends on which group is being snooped on whether libs or conservatives are unhappy...
...Maybe they too are dying to hear the scripture dearly and intelligently explained in a way that applies to daily social and personal problems...
...At any rate, the survey highlights a crisis in public confidence and self-confidence in the clergy...
...surely the other 31 could have cooperated more fully...
...45 percent of the laity) felt the clergy were unaware of people's problems...
...It is also a neighborhood with 14 Roman Catholic parishes staffed by 70 priests (many no longer young), with an estimated 54,234 Catholics (3.2 percent of all the Catholics in the Archdiocese) ---about a third of whom practice their religion, compared to the national average, reported in the 1975 Gallup poll, of 54 percent...
...They are, in general, professional people, more afffluent, better educated, younger, less tied to families than the general population...
...GEORGE HEN'DRY Lawreneeville, NJ...
...except that this fear is currently livelier than the preceding one...
...7] is the best I've read for a year--although some bias could be present...
...Which leads us to a final point...
...Yet, if they are not "typical" they do represent, because of their needs, talents, influence and potential, a group for which the Church should have a special c o n c e r n . The initiative for the survey came from the lay area council, with the support of the area's priests' conference...
...The parishioners were genuinely glad to be surveyed and hoped the results would get the Church to face its problems...
...It implies that the priests themselves must show some serious soul-searching about their own understanding of the faith, their prayer lives, and the theological and cultural chvafges that have, in the last 20 years, so radically altered our society and the way we both think about God and relate to one another...
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...Some principal findings: the main characteristic that distinguishes non-attenders from attenders was that less than half the disaffected group believed in hell, or baptism as spiritual rebirth...
...The questionnaire, prepared by the OPR, focused on the central issues of Church life: participation in the Eucharist, faith, individual and social morality, and the life of the parish...
...use the laity more in evangelization...
...It is the neighborhood of diminishing old brownstones, museums, multiplying impersonal high-rise apartment houses, BloomingCommonweal: 131 dale's Department Store, chic first-run movie houses where the "beautiful people" form long lines around the corners on weekend nights, "swinging" singles bars and restaurants...
...Maybe it is my misfortune knowing only those who seem not totally committed...
...Still, there is an interesting pattern in the priests' responses to the questionnaire...
...Second c/ass postage poid at New Yerb, N.F...
...And perhaps too these same priests are acknowledging their own frustration in trying to cope with a complex situation that seems, within the traditional parish set-up, beyond their control...
...and it would be unfair to put too much blame on the parish priests, since so many of them are dedicated, hard-working and holy men...
Vol. 104 • March 1977 • No. 5
